Fig. 4: Stress relaxation under heterogeneous and homogeneous irradiation.
From: Fast low-temperature irradiation creep driven by athermal defect dynamics
a Comparison of four irradiation-induced stress relaxation experiments to a parameter-free simulation using the virtual wire model under an initial uniaxial tensile stress \({\sigma }_{{{\rm{zz}}}}^{{{\rm{ext}}}}\) of 1 GPa. The model predicts a relatively small degree of relaxation, in agreement with experiment, due to the small volume fraction of the irradiated volume of the wire. b Predicted stress relaxation curves for a hypothetical homogeneous irradiation scenario under various initial uniaxial tensile and compressive stresses. Most of the relaxation is predicted to occur within the first 0.3 dpa.
